Redefine authority. Don't outsource your power.

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Redefine authority. Don’t outsource yours.

We have an authority problem. Mostly, that we’ve outsourced our own inner authority to external “experts” and “authorities.”

Doctors.

Politicians.

Clergy.

Bosses.

Data.

I’m not suggesting that people in these roles are not helpful or good at what they do. (I’m also not suggesting that they ALL are.) I believe in expertise, experience, wisdom, and learning from others.

The problem is, somewhere along the way expertise became tangled up in systems of dominance. Authority became something externalized, something we were commanded to “look up” to. It became hierarchical—and worse, substitutional. It was meant to supplant our own self-knowledge

When that happens, and when we don’t develop our own inner authority—our own self-knowledge, intuition, and agency—we get exploited and manipulated.

It’s time to make ourselves the authority—literally, the authors—of our own lives. We have agency, intuition and instinct to develop self-awareness and self-knowledge. We can collect our own experiential data about what happens when we live life—just by paying attention to our intuition, instinct, and the world around us.

When we develop a strong compass based on our own integrity and self-knowledge—and ADD that to the knowledge of experts, rather than suppressing our own inner expertise in order to elevate someone else’s knowledge—that’s when we can evolve the conversation. Create better outcomes. Create healthier lives.

Don’t outsource your own authority. Write your own life; others can be contributing editors, but you get to author the plot. Write what you know: yourself.

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What’s one way to develop your inner authority? Add your intuition to your intellect.

The Age of Reason has had a good run. 

Reason is good. Reason created some elegant methods for pursuing knowledge. We’ve solved some problems. We’ve discovered so much.

How’s that working out for us? Are we happier, healthier, more in love with life?

For many of us, there’s still something missing.

The Age of Intuition is re-emerging.

True to character, it has been gestating in the murky nether-regions of our soil and psyches, crafting an underground network of connection, meaning, and love as we’ve flailed above, trying not to need all of those things that aren’t susceptible to the slick schtick of reason.

We’ve become experts at consuming knowledge—it is more available to us than ever, we can consume it more quickly than ever.

But… then what?

When we add intuition to intellect, we’re using a broader spectrum of knowledge. Knowledge can grow into the fullness of wisdom.

Intuition IS knowledge.

It’s just a different pathway for acquiring knowledge than the singular cerebral way we’ve been taught over the past few hundred years.

Intuition is thinking differently—not thinking ABOUT things differently (though this will be a likely outcome), but literally using a different mechanism for thinking: intuition.

Interestingly, intuition is not behind a paywall.

Intuition is freely available to all.

Intuition gathers its own data, and still manages to be evidence-based.

Intuition bypasses “authority.”

Which is exactly why it has been maligned and relegated to the world of woo—it’s basically free power. 

Intuition isn’t going to fix all of your problems. But it will add depth to your knowledge, and help turn it into wisdom.

Intuition will help you understand yourself more deeply. It will help you understand others more fully.

Intuition will help you see the patterns that connect your personal experience to the world at large—and beyond.

Adding intuition to intellect is how we find our way back to healthy humanity—deep humans, deep connection, for a healthy planet, for all.

Why strategy is a leader’s best friend

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JUST. ARTICULATE. A. STRATEGY!!!!!

If I could name the biggest factor leading to inefficient use of resources, overwork, de-motivation, and burnout that I witnessed and experienced over the course of my own 30-year career, it would be this:

Lack of clearly articulated strategy.

It’s the elephant in the room no one seems to want to acknowledge in the quest for increasing productivity and returns.

I’m all for growth, moving fast, experimentation, trying new ideas, getting creative—at the right point along the journey.

At some point, you need to pick something, stick with it, develop an elegant, integrated strategy to implement it—and then communicate it widely, clearly, and repeatedly, while also devoting resources to it.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve operated without either an articulated strategy or any resources devoted to it—and it’s a constant source of frustration (and conversation) for my clients.

Lack of strategy leads to de-motivation and burnout because without strategy, we don’t know where to place our concerted efforts in order to work towards success.

Without a coherent strategy as our orientation point, we end up expending energy everywhere, which dilutes the impact of our efforts.

Then, because our efforts aren’t focused on a strategy that gets us somewhere, they aren’t rewarded. We’re working hard, but not getting the gratification of seeing a real impact and being rewarded for it.

It’s like trying to sprint a marathon, but no one decided where the end is or what “finishing” looks like—or gave us any water to drink along the way.

Or, maybe there IS a strategy, but no resources devoted to it. So, it becomes another to-do list along with our other million to-do lists, and more often than not, they are all “priorities,” (because how can you prioritize when there’s no strategy?), so it’s impossible to determine where to focus our energies.

So, we overwork to compensate for the lack of resources or strategy, feel overwhelmed because we don’t have adequate resources to do high-level work, and end up doing a whole lot of work we’re not all that proud of because we weren’t set up with the conditions we need to do great work and make an impact.

This is incredibly de-motivating.

The burden of bad strategy flows downstream.

One antidote is to create a good strategy, and stick with it.

Another is to connect the dots—understand how lack of strategy or changing one mid-stream play out across the system. All too often, I see leadership teams change strategy without a real understanding of how this impacts teams at all levels. This is truly unfortunate—and avoidable.

If you are leading a team, please look at your strategies, objectives, goals and tactics—and communicate them clearly. Repeatedly. Look at what resources are devoted to implementing those strategies. If you don’t have resources to devote to a strategy, then I’m sorry to tell you… it isn’t a priority. Don’t pretend it is. That is bad leadership. If you insist it is a priority, then find resources for it; that is good leadership.

If you don’t have time to develop a strategy, then be clear and honest about the fact that that that IS your strategy.

Accept that there will be some wasted work along the way, because how can a team make good choices about where to devote resources and energy without a strategy? They can’t.

If you are being led and don’t understand a strategy, please manage up and ask. If there isn’t one, ask why. If you’re being asked to perform a task that isn’t aligned with a strategy, ask why you should execute it—get curious about the rationale behind to ensure it’s worth the time and effort. At the end of the day, we don’t always get to make that decision—but knowing what we’re working with is paramount if we want to do fulfilling work that actually helps us achieve our mission.

If you are consciously crafting a life you love, please look at your strategies, objectives, goals and tactics for achieving it. Look at what resources you’re devoting to implementing your strategies. If you don’t have resources to devote to a strategy, then I’m sorry to tell you… it isn’t a priority. Or, decide that it is, and reallocate your resources.

What’s true for life is true for work—because we’re humans. We want to do good work, and get the payoff from doing good work. That means making choices, and not others. That means devoting resources to some things, and not others. That means letting go of some things, and not others.

To be a humanful leader requires an understanding and acknowledgement of how strategy and lack of strategy impact our decision-making, autonomy, energy, and performance. Welcome to the paradigm shift.

Make integrity profitable.

Make integrity profitable.

I recently read an MIT Sloan Management Review article that cited a research study examining ten factors that influenced managers’ decisions to promote their employees.

They surveyed nearly 9,000 people in 383 companies. While the article was focused on leadership and goal-setting, I was struck by something else: They developed a list of the top ten factors that influence promotions.

Number one on the list of factors that influence promotion was “Past performance.” Makes sense to me.

Number two: “Political connections.” Hmm.

Number eight out of ten on the list of what factors led to promotion: “Acting with integrity.”

This is bad news.

If integrity is not crucial for promotions, what incentive do leaders and employees have to act with integrity?

There’s personal self-incentive, of course, but not much of a systemic one.

This has ramifications. We are influenced by the systems we operate within.

I focus on the intersection of self-development and systemic evolution, and to me, this is one of those intersections that we need to examine.

Pitting personal integrity against organizational priorities—and earning one’s livelihood—is a slippery slope.

What if integrity were profitable—at every level of one’s career?

What if we were expressly rewarded for it?

It almost seems crude to suggest we reward people for what we should be doing naturally… but then again, it’s mindboggling to me that we tolerate the sweeping breaches of ethics and integrity that are going on in plain sight.

If integrity was groomed throughout one’s career, would we still produce so many leaders who lack it?

To be fair, I have no doubt that the success of many individuals and organizations is due in part to their integrity—it’s good business for people who want to do good business for good humans. And, this research study is just one study. But it just might point to something larger.

We need organizational integrity to be non-negotiable.

This makes it easier—not harder—for individuals working within organizations to prioritize integrity together, creating the best possible dynamic: a symbiotic relationship based on shared integrity.

P.S. While we’re at it, let’s make war unprofitable.

Transform systems by evolving at the individual level.

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Things need to change.

They need to change from the top-down, and the bottom-up.

At the individual level, and at the systems level.

The good news is, everything is reciprocal: so the more you do to heal and evolve, the more the systems around you will be informed by that.

The more the systems you are a part of heal and evolve, the more you will feel the impact of that.

My personal expertise is the intersection of individual self-development and systems evolution. I love diving deep with individuals into what makes them come alive, and I am also a systems-thinker who sees the ripple effects at the collective level.

This is especially true in organizations and institutions—in the workplace.

We can no longer afford to keep self-development sequestered in the realm of individual therapy or coaching.

There is no leadership development without self-development.

Healthy individuals are only as healthy as the systems they are a part of: relationships with themselves, their lovers, their families, their friends, their colleagues, their communities, their organizations, their governing bodies.

And healthy systems are only as healthy as the integrity of the people who work within them.

The best systems will fail us if the people leading them are nincompoops. The best people will fail us if their environment doesn’t allow them to thrive.

If you are a humanful leader, or would like to be, then your own self-development is part of the process. What does that look like?

• Practicing curiosity rather than judgment.

• Learning how to work with your ego and triggers (and others’) without letting those egos and triggers run the show.

• Up-leveling your skills of collaboration.

• Learning how to connect authentically—not from behind a mask.

• Creating a safe, inclusive environment: radical belonging.

• Establishing a culture of giving and receiving feedback fluently, so everyone gets crucial intelligence about course-corrections that need to take place.

• Learning how to create sound strategies—and then sticking to them by creating and measuring objectives and tasks that dovetail with them.

• Defining what good leadership means to you personally.

• Identifying your particular gifts, and how you use them in service of your leadership.

• Understanding that leadership is a service position. If you don’t see it that way, your ego may be running the show. (That’s amendable, if you choose.)

• Respecting your colleagues as whole humans. (If you don’t, then kindly reassess whether you are meant to be a leader. Not everyone is, and that’s okay.)

• Learning how to work with emergence.

• Understanding that leadership is an embodied stance of showing up human—not simply a role or job title.

If you want better systems—more inclusive companies, less exploitation, more collaboration, less domination—then start with yourself.

Build the awareness, skills, and courage to act in integrity with your humanity.

All things change when we do.

If you know your own self-development is connected to the greater good, and if you’re looking for a collaborator to hone your skills and dive deep so you can fly high, let me know. You’re my type.

Untangle your value from your rank + role.

Untangle your value from your rank + role.

Most of us currently operate within cultures that use hierarchy to signal authority, rank, and expertise.

Bosses, C-suite, and experts are seen as more valuable than those who fall lower on the totem pole.

Rank is equated to power, high value, leadership, and dominance.

But we’ve mixed up our PERSONAL value with FUNCTIONAL value of roles and rank within hierarchy.

Someone higher up may (or not) have more functional value than someone else.

But no one is more inherently valuable as a human being than others. Our value has nothing to do with our jobs. To be a humanful leader—one who is collaborative, co-creative, and inclusive—this is crucial to understand.

The function of our role, however, becomes more or less valuable depending on the circumstances. We just don’t have systems that reflect that, by and large—we have fixed systems, not fluid ones.

When hierarchy + identity become entangled, things go wonky.

Hierarchies are useful: triage, emergencies, situations requiring quick, coordinated execution and pre-planned strategies and protocols. In these cases, functions meet context, and a fixed hierarchy is efficient and effective. Makes sense.

But as rigid models used to signal rank + dominance—which in our culture have also come to signal personal value—hierarchies become a tool for disconnection. When every action is ranked, each action becomes a judgment of better than/less than—every action becomes a transaction.

When relationships become transactional, we lose the possibilities that come from collaborating, co-creating, and mutual respect; we end up relying more on people-pleasing or politicking to receive accolades—and our salaries.

We run the risk of losing ourselves, because our identities are not found in rank, roles, or value judgments about them (even if someone tells you they are); identity can only be found within.

This is one reason why many leaders end up feeling “alone at the top,” or disconnected from the reality of their organization. The farther apart the roles in a hierarchy, the more disconnection and distrust exists between them.

Others can feel less-than, like imposters, or needing to pacify those at higher levels.

This inhibits healthy competition, which arises from going all in with others who are willing to do the same. 

It also hinders the institution from operating effectively as an organism. We all saw during COVID that the value of a role is largely contextual: front-line healthcare workers became the most valuable roles on the planet, but their rank within hierarchy didn’t necessarily reflect that.

Creativity, collaboration, and innovation rely on mutual connection, respect, safety. Rank and hierarchy hinder this—unless proactive steps are taken to make sure that they don’t.

This is a loss at a personal level: managing egos is far less interesting than evolving our expertise.

It’s also a systemic loss: rank hinders feedback that flows up, and feedback is intelligence about the organism’s health. Why might feedback be withheld? Because it might be received as an affront to rank by the ego—and if that person is the one who evaluates us, and our evaluations are what ensure we get to pay our bills… well, that’s some dynamic tension right there. Let’s talk about it.

When we untangle personal identity from role/rank within hierarchy—when organizations can focus more on functional aspects of hierarchy and less on egoic—that creates an ecosystem that fosters healthy human collaboration, competition, and creativity.

That is an open, innovative system. That is growth mindset. That is evolution.

What could healing hierarchy look like?

1. Untangle value judgments from roles within hierarchy.

2. View it as a multi-faceted, contextual organism in service of a mission rather than a tool for wielding dominance.

What if we revalued hierarchies?

What if the current way of overvaluing the top and undervaluing the bottom of the triangle is flawed? Not because hierarchies are bad, but because fixed hierarchies have been used for signaling dominance, which is arbitrary, which erodes connection, which erodes trust between individuals and of institutions, which erodes community, which erodes human prosperity, which erodes generosity and compassion and joy?

What if we used hierarchies as a fluid tool that could flatten and reassemble based on context and necessity?

Where affluence flowed to the most valuable based on circumstance—not fixed, arbitrary judgments of who has more “social capital” or “power” than whom?

What if the hierarchy understood that the top of the triangle only exists because the entire rest of it exists? That it is a reciprocal, interdependent system that can only operate as a unit? That every role is only as valuable as the circumstances it responds to, which will shift because life does?

What if hierarchy knew how to get itself into flow state?

What if the structures and systems we build evolve as quickly as we do?

This is part of my series “Healing Hierarchy: How to shift from domination to collaboration in the workplace.” More to come.

Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure”

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Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure.”

Pleasure is a beautiful thing.

Pleasure is built into our bodies.

Pleasure is part of our power as humans.

Pleasure is feedback.

Pleasure is our birthright.

And, there needs to be discernment around when healthy pleasure tips over into unhealthy “pleasure.”

There is a difference between seeking real pleasure—things that nourish, replenish, enliven, and satiate you—and unhealthy pleasure, which is a bottomless numbing mechanism for pain, rather than a movement towards health.

Healthy pleasure satiates and replenishes us—it is balanced.

Unhealthy pleasure is a detour to distract us from pain—which it can’t ever actually fulfill, which is why we always crave more of it. When imbalanced, it can turn into addiction, numbing, distraction, or overindulgence in an attempt to self-soothe.

We do need to self-soothe, but we need to get to the root of just what it is we are actually trying to soothe and address it directly, rather than trying to tamp it down. This is where deep inner work comes in, dealing with our shadows and trauma, and learning new skills for healing and balance.

And, we need to learn to choose healthy, balanced pleasure SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS PLEASURABLE.

We don’t have to justify it. We win no extra points at the end of the game of life for denying ourselves true pleasure. Healthy pleasure is a tool for self-balance; without it, it’s hard not to fall victim to unhealthy pleasure in some way.

How do we discern balanced pleasure from imbalanced gratification?

Imbalanced gratification leaves us wanting more—it is never complete. It never has enough, so we don’t feel lit up by life. We feel anxiety about not getting the thing we’re craving. When we get it, we feel let down—if we don’t numb that feeling, too.

Healthy pleasure makes us feel ALIVE, energized, and connected to life, others, and ourselves. Healthy pleasure is tied to our values, gifts, and deep desires.

Healthy pleasure fills us up WITH OURSELVES, so we feel generous—healthy pleasure wants to be shared. Which means healthy pleasure is healthy not just for you, but for others, too. That is a beautiful thing.

Come back to your senses. Literally.

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If the world looks like it’s lost its senses, maybe it’s because… it has.

Literally. 

Our senses aren’t irrelevant afterthoughts to human life.

Sensory information is data; our bodies and our brains interpret that data to create our lived experience.

In one aspect, our senses are overwhelmed: by constant screen use, noise pollution, light pollution, exhaust fumes, pop-ups, traffic noise and exhaust, artificial flavors, overstimulation. 

On the flip side, we’re starving for rich, true sensory connection—for pleasure.

Pleasure, too, is data.

What if the craziness in the world is pointing to a primal need to return to… pleasure?

To take in data that soothes our nervous systems because of its evolutionary familiarity?

We forget, sometimes, that we evolved along WITH everything else. We are wired from our reciprocal connection with all that is—through our senses.

What might pleasureful senses feel like?

Sound: Birdsong, crickets, crashing waves, raindrops, wind rising and falling in the trees—sounds we’ve evolved along with, but don’t always get to hear, nowadays.

Touch: Dirt underneath our feet, the way different earths talk to our toes in different tongues. Human touch: playful, sensual, familiar, warm, safe. Co-regulating our nervous systems in community through safe, healing touch.

Taste: A palate rehabilitated from the onslaught of artifice, that can taste with delicacy the wholeness of whole food, discern seasonings, know satiation that comes from food as an immersive experience, not just fullness. The tentative touch of tongue to the unfamiliar. The knowing taste of tongue to sun-kissed skin after emerging from the sea.

Scent: The million different scents of earth after different types of rain. Fallen pine needles toasting in the summer sun. The varied terrain of our human bodies. Wet dog. Dry dog. Ocean. Trees in the morning. Night blooms.

Sight: Beauty. Horizons. The billion shades and patterns of ocean waters, sweetwater brooks, puddles, tide pools. The Milky Way, unadulterated by light pollution. A newly-fledged cardinal chasing its parent, vibrating its wings and chirping to be fed. A baby anole wagging its tail as it stalks bugs. Cumulonimbus clouds. The humble pinecone.

All of these sensory experiences speak to us; they remind our bodies what our life is about, how life feels through pleasure, where we find pain.

To come back to your senses, try feeding yourself with conscious pleasure.

This is how we re/member ourselves, and remember our place here on this planet.

This is how we come home.

What it means to rewild

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What it means to rewild

In ecology, rewilding is a movement that allows the natural world time to replenish after cultivation: time to rest, enrich, and realign with her innate intelligence, patterns, and rhythms.

What if humans allowed ourselves a similar process of rewilding? Of rediscovering our true nature?

This could look like…

• Learning how to tune into our intuition

• Rediscovering our instincts

• Learning how to listen to our bodily wisdom

• Naming our strategies for getting our needs and desires met

• Expressing ourselves authentically

• Taking off our masks so we can connect fully and freely

• Reclaiming our passion

• Claiming our truest power

• Creating: a gift, an idea, a poem, art, a project, a paradigm… whatever wildly unique offering you have singing beneath your skin, ready to surge through you. 

When we untangle ourselves from outdated conditioning, stories, and habits, allow ourselves space to sieve through our own rich soil, then plant seeds for a new vision and nourish our deepest desires… we bloom.

Our blood remembers how to sing.

I developed the Creative Rewilding journey as a regenerative process to restore ourselves to our natural state of curiosity, creativity, and vibrancy.

To reignite our fire.

To wander between our inner and outer landscapes.

To tune in to our unique gifts and values, align with patterns in nature.

To fall in love + lust with our own lives—so we can use that as scaffolding to “code” our life force and create what only we can create. 

To fire up our own life force so it can surge through us.

This is generative activism: We transform the world by aligning with its natural rhythms and patterns. And our own.

You know you have a gift you’re meant to offer the world.

The Creative Rewilding process will help you clarify what that is and shift limiting perspectives, so you can GIVE IT. It's needed.

Your greatest gift is someone else’s deepest desire. Will you give it?

The surprising power of play

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The surprising power of play.

Playing is basically evolution that works well for our nervous systems—not the kind of evolution that requires us to starve, mutate, exhaust ourselves, inflict pain, render ourselves extinct, all that fun stuff. 

• Play is experimentation. 

• Play is iteration.

• Play is pushing past our boundaries.

• Play is creative.

• Play is co-creative.

• Play is strengthening.

• Play helps regulate our nervous systems.

• Play is fun.

• Play strengthens social connection.

• Physical play strengthens our muscles, body language, connection cues.

• Play laughs in the face of judgment--and invites it to play.

• Play dares itself to take it one step too far.

• Play is a way for us to grow and evolve with low stakes. The outcome doesn’t matter—which means we can be open to any possibility arising, rather than trying to control and manage the process so we achieve a predictable process and outcome.

Play is growth mindset.

Predictability, control, managing—these are all excellent things in certain circumstances. And unbelievably boring in others.

You know the phrase, “If you want to make god laugh, tell her your plans?”

I think this is basically the universe’s way of telling us that we are not the boss of her—but she would love to play with us, because she loves a good laugh and loves creating things. 

If you want to grow, PLAY.

If you want to be creative, PLAY.

If you want to evolve, PLAY.

Play answers a surprising number of questions.

How else could the world have ridiculous things like blue-footed boobies and hammerhead sharks and hot-magenta dragonfruit and sloths? There’s a tiny bug on my gardenia with fuzz coming out of its butt—it’s ridiculous. You think these were the a result of serious, controlled work?

No, clearly these are manifestations of the mindset of, “I wonder what happens if I do THIS?”

What if we let go of trying to manage the process, and played through it? Together?

What if we outplayed play?

Want to up the ante?

Practice ridiculosity: ridiculousness at high velocity (I like to make up words, because I love to PLAY).

Don’t underestimate the power of ridiculousness. Go play.

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There’s been a lot of research over the past several years about the importance of play. And one of my favorite books is Deep Play by Diane Ackerman. I highly recommend it!

Step one: Redefine power

Redefine “power” to mean being in love with life. YOUR life.

What would it feel like if you were in love + lust with your life? What would it look like?

What would the world look like if everyone was in love with their lives? What if that was non-negotiable?

I can’t magically make our problems go away. This is not an excuse to turn away from the suffering in the world and what we all need to do to alleviate it.

But I can learn what I love, and hold myself accountable to honoring what I love with my time and energy. I can learn what makes me feel vibrant, and honor that with my time and energy.

I can learn to scale out my perspective so I see how indescribably beautiful the sheer improbability of this planet is.

I can marvel at the craziness of fireflies, and feel a little bit jealous that I can’t do that.

I can do others the honor of asking them what they love, what brings them alive. 

When I allow myself to do what I love, I feel powerful, happy, generous. When I’m filled to overflowing with my own humanity, I want to do that with everyone else.

I happen to think that if we all did this, the world would start healing in bigger and faster ways. And this is totally doable. It’s not everything (or maybe it is), but it’s something.

Joy loves joy. Power loves power. When power is joyful, and joy is powerful, we will have found ourselves smack in the middle of a new paradigm.

Start right now. Some ideas? Glad you asked! Here are a few:

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When someone asks you what you do, tell them what you love.

Then ask them what they love.

What if we were all allies, helping each other to uphold for ourselves what we love, helping us stay true to what we love? What if we were asked many times a day to share what we love, and why? What if what we love is non-negotiable?

We all “do” a million things, play a million roles. I think what you love is the most interesting thing about you. I’d love to know what you love.

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Take off your masks.

We all play a million parts throughout our lives. Often, we put on masks in order to fit into different scenarios, to be acceptable to different people, to be valued by various systems—all of which are playing their parts, as well.

The problem is, we sometimes lose sight of who we truly are beneath our roles and masks.

We play our parts so well, we forget that they are just that: parts.

And when we lose sight of ourselves, we need others to validate our existence, rather than knowing the truth of ourselves—and sharing it—from the inside out.

Who are you without your masks? What would happen if you took them off, one by one? What if vulnerability and transparency was accompanied by relief—relief that you can finally respond to life as YOU, not a small subset of you?

We find ourselves in a strange spacetime in history where we are both starving for connection and inundated with it at the same time.

What we’re craving is not just any and all connection, but authentic, nourishing, pleasurable connection: not surface-level, smush-yourself-down-into-a-box-to-conform empty-calorie connection.

We’re aching for quality, not quantity.

There are those of us who want more of you. There are those of us who want to see all of you, and are waiting for you to reveal the rich facets of who you are so we can play as whole, in-it-all-together human beings.

Trust follows truth.

Connection follows trust.

Authentic connection heals the trauma of disconnection—and of domination masquerading as connection.

Taking off our masks is a great first step.

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Don’t make an impact ON the world, realign with its natural intelligence. And yours.

If you’re reading this, you probably think a lot about where we’re headed as earthlings. I sure do. You know you want to do good, to leave the world a better place. I want that, too.

But I’ve also realized that life wants something from me.

That my intentions, no matter how noble, how visionary, will rapidly become wobbly if I don’t anchor them in what the world needs and desires along with me.

That imposing my vision on the world is a very old-school, will-based, power-over, my way or the highway pattern. It’s all about me. It’s about making my mark, making an impact ON. This is the type of overpowering that happens when we’re actually unsure of our power.

But my relationship with life needs to be consensual.

Playing WITH life, co-creating along with it—that’s the bigger game. That’s the game I want to play. Then it is about me, and also about everyone and everything else. The beauty of this is that, while I might be cultivating my particular vision of a garden, I’m never doing it alone.

Life is telling us what it desires all the time. It is showing us where there are needs all the time. It is giving us opportunities to learn about our deepest desires and gifts all the time (#naps). It is giving us information about what we definitely want no part of all the time (#math).

When we align our natural intelligence—the feedback system of pleasure, pain, love, grief, talent, joy, beliefs, vision—with the natural intelligence of the world, then we will have aligned ourselves with life as it is: a fluid ecosystem continually giving and receiving feedback about how to come back into balance.

This feels much more real than pretending I’m in control of it all.

This is how you co-create an impact FOR the world, with the world.

This feels much more connected to my natural human intelligence, which intuitively and instinctively knows that everything is interdependent, that systems have innate intelligence.

This feels like a relief. Try it out. Let me know how it goes?

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Asking for help is you exercising your agency; it is NOT “victim-mode.”

Enough with the victim-shaming. Asking for help is not the same thing as asking someone to do something for you, it’s asking someone to do something WITH you.

Our true nature is to give, AND to receive. We are not designed to do everything alone.

Do we need to build up our strength, skills, resourcefulness? Absolutely.

Can we be prompted to see and rely on our own power + agency? Absolutely. 

Do we need to rescue everyone? Nope. 

But we need to get real about the fact that there are incredibly difficult circumstances that people need help with. Sometimes, this even means doing something for them.

Telling someone (or yourself) to get out of “survival mode” and into “thriving mode” may be turning a blind eye to the systemic circumstances that perpetuate pain + suffering, and puts all of the burden on the individual to overcome them.

There is a time and place for “thriving mode,” for sure. But we need to be able to discern whether or not our minds, bodies, nervous systems, and external experiences are aligned enough for us to make that transition. If not, we end up stuck and feeling the shame of yet another “failure” to live up to our potential.

Please, be kind with yourself + others. It’s entirely possible that we have within us conflicting parts, some of which are able to thrive, some that aren’t. This is just fine, as long as we don’t bulldoze the parts that aren’t yet ready to shift or glorify the parts that are.

It may be that the “victimy” part desperately longs to know it doesn’t have to do life alone.

We will likely flow in and out if thriving + surviving, victimhood + creatorhood throughout our lives, just because life is life.

We are works in progress, always. So is life. Understanding this might be the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, and others.

Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate

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Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate

This one’s pretty obvious. Nature shows us endless examples of the radial:

• dandelions

• the sun and stars

• hands and fingers

• the iris of our eyes

• a drop rippling outward in the water

• sunflowers

The lesson of the radial?

Let yourself shine your radiance—in all directions.

Throw yourself out there—in all directions. 

AND

Receive from all directions.

Draw nourishment from all directions.

Put out feelers in all directions, so they can draw in the nurturing you need—into your core.

Let your own radiance feed your core: your heart.

This may be the secret wisdom of the radial: that it flings itself outward in all directions… because it knows all roads lead back to the heart.

Shine on, wild ones. Happy rewilding.

Learn from nature’s patterns: fractal

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Learn from nature’s patterns: fractal

Consider the fractal:

• tributaries of a river

• veins and arteries in our bodies

• a fern

• the branch of a tree

• spines of mountains

• leaves of a succulent

• our lungs and neurons

All are examples of fractals, a pattern that repeats itself over and over at different sizes as it grows and expands.

The fractal is another pattern in nature we see everywhere—but how can the fractal pattern bring us closer to ourselves?

Ever repeat a pattern over and over in your life, for better or worse?

That pattern was created because it works (or worked) in some way. Repeated over time, that pattern creates structure—it becomes its own blueprint and scaffolding for replicating itself. It’s a fractal.

Our brains LOVE this: predictable, repeatable patterns simply require less energy than doing things differently.

This is one reason it can be so hard to break a pattern—the wiring wants to perpetuate itself.

The good news is, this is also why truly changing a pattern ripples out into ALL areas of our lives—the pattern reconfigures itself at all levels.

This is why personal self-development is not different from leadership development is not different from relationship development is not different from culture-shifting.

Same skills—different scale.

That’s a fractal.

One example that’s common with my clients (and myself):

Learning how to have difficult conversations while maintaining authentic connection. This is something that will help you in conversations with your colleagues as much as with your partner and friends.

Same skills—different context. 

Is there a pattern in your life you’d like to rewire?

If you were to shift one pattern, what areas in your life could transform?

I’d love to know—share in the comments!

Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

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Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

A tree.

A human body.

An earthworm.

The Everything Bagel. (Anyone?)

Perhaps the universe itself.

What do these have in common? 

They’re all examples of the torus, a rotating, regenerative, self-perpetuating… doughnut.

A tree grows up from the ground; as it grows through seasons and cycles, it sheds leaves and disperses rain off its leaves, both of which nourish the roots and soil it needs to continue to grow.

A regenerative, self-nourishing cycle. Its own decay + shed serve its continued growth.

Human bodies, even earthworms do the same thing.

We ingest nutrients, they nourish and sustain us, then we release that sh*t back into the soil to fertilize what we need to grow to continue nourishing us—so the cycle continues. 

So beautifully symbolic. Such rich, earthy wisdom.

How can the pattern of the torus be useful? Ask yourself, in both a literal + metaphorical sense:

• What nourishes you? Are you proactively growing that?

• What do you need to shed in order to continue to grow?

• What healthy, regenerative systems + cycles can you create that continue to supply the nutrients you need without depleting the source?

• What systems and cycles do you see that are NOT self-sustaining?

As we continue to examine nature, nature feeds us back: with foods, beauty, wisdom. 

Regenerative cycles have an innate balance.

How can you find balance in relationship with yourself and the world?

Be the doughnut you wish to see in the world. 

Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral

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Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral

Have you ever noticed that spirals are everywhere?

Snail shells.

Pinecones.

Galaxies.

Flower petals.

Hurricanes. W

hirlpools.

Cabbage.

DNA.

Fingerprints.

Clearly, it’s a pattern that works—physical matter somehow knows how to organize itself this way.

In my mission to NOT recreate the wheel, again, that’s good enough for me.

This is the heart of Creative Rewilding, my sanctuary/launchpad for paradigm shifters:

• Exploring macrocosmic patterns and applying them to our individual circumstances.

• Realigning with the universe’s natural intelligence so we can tap into our own true nature and create what only we can create.

Our desires are what inspire us to journey. Patterns in nature are our guideposts.

There’s a theory of evolution called spiral dynamics that states that growth occurs along a spiral, not a straight line.

A spiral implies movement, but also expansion—it’s not a line drawing over itself, it’s a line expanding incrementally outward as it moves. Over and over again.

The spiral creates itself through repetition. One trip around isn’t a spiral. It needs to repeat the motion—while also expanding.

This pattern helps explain why we as humans repeat patterns—as we move along the spiral, we revisit the same spot, over and over.

BUT—we’re see that spot from different perspectives.

We’re not backsliding, we are seeing the same thing from a different vantage point.

It’s a great lesson in perspective-shifting.

When we can learn how to consciously move along the spiral with curiosity and compassion, examining it can give us incredibly rich information—about ourselves, and about life.

I invite you to play with spirals in your life.

Where are they showing up?

Where are you repeating a pattern, and how could that inform you if you were to look at it from a different perspective?

How are you expanding, even as you repeat motions?

Where are your desires leading you?

If you’re willing to share your insights, I’d love to hear about them! Share in the comments.

Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

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Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

One thing I’m clear on is that we don’t need to change the world—we need realign with its natural intelligence.

We are the ones who need to regain our balance.

If we can return to our true nature as creatures who are meant to live in a symbiotic relationship within an ecosystem called Earth, we’ll naturally create healthy, healing communities, practices, systems, environments, and psyches.

Nature’s patterns are guideposts for us—they are feedback for us as we seek balance.

• The reciprocity of ebb and flow, like our friends the tides, the breath, vibration.

• The self-nourishing, regenerative torus, like our friends the trees.

• The spiral of growth and focus, from the snail’s shell to spiral galaxies.

• The fractal of iteration, like the fern’s fronds.

• The exploration and delivery system of branches, like our rivers and arteries.

• The radiance of the radial throwing energy in all directions, from our friends the dandelions to the life-giving sun.

These patterns are repeated, over and over, throughout space and time, from macro to micro.

If these patterns work that well at every scale, for billions of years, I figure they’re good enough for me.

We really don’t need to recreate the wheel, just look around to see what patterns already surround us—and embody them.

One of nature’s most basic patterns is the simple dynamic of ebb and flow.

Growth + rest.

Give + receive.

Spend + replenish.

Day + night.

Yin + yang.

Expansion + contraction.

Summer + winter.

Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking of these as polarities. They are simply different parts of a circuit, a self-healing cycle that balances itself as it moves through the journey. A beautiful balance of reciprocity and symbiosis.

What if we could embody the full pattern ourselves? What if we didn’t shame the contraction, the need for rest, the shadows in the dark as enemies locked in battle with their opposites, but rather saw them as integral parts of an ongoing process?

Not saboteurs, simply agents of balance.

Try it out: play with ebb and flow.

Where is your life in flow?

Where is it in ebb?

Where might you need to spend more time or energy in order to find your own balance?

Honor your cycles and seasons as journeys you get to walk, not fixed destinations—there is simply no such thing in a universe as dynamic as ours.

Rediscover your true nature by reconnecting to nature’s patterns. Tell me how it goes? I’d love to know!

Dare to meet life intimately

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Dare to meet life intimately.

Life will only be as fulfilling as the depth with which we’re willing to meet it.

Surface-level connections will fulfill us… at the surface.

But our depths crave intimacy and sharing. Intimacy craves depth, not masks and walls.

What if we stopped holding life at arm’s length?

What if we entered into an intimate relationship with all that is?

What if we were willing to walk through life…

… holding everything with care and protection

… seeing fully

… being seen fully

… open

… being opened

… sharing

… embracing what is, not what we think should be

… releasing masks and performance

… touching and being touched

… loving wholeheartedly

… being moved by life?

The tragedy is that we’ve narrowed down the idea of “intimacy” to something that only happens behind closed doors. (Another tragedy is that sex does not necessarily include intimacy—sometimes, it’s anything but.)

But why not be intimate in every realm of our lives? 

Why not share deeply during lunchtime?

Why not be willing to be moved by a random conversation in line at the drugstore?

Why not hold with care what you see on your walk?

Intimacy is everywhere, if we have the courage to meet it: a type of quantum entanglement that thrills in knowing us—as we know ourselves—more and more fully.

An intimate life is a gift to humanity.

Why not live life as if it were a love letter to the planet?

The importance of showing up messy

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The importance of showing up messy

I’m someone who, for the most part, has been able to show up well in my life. I’m pretty presentable. I know how to play well with others. I can get the job done. Not always perfectly, not always the best, but good enough.

One May day in 2020, I woke up and everything changed. I had a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which caused by brain to sag, which prompted a cascade of neurological and physical degeneration over the next 13 months. It was awful, and terrifying. It screwed up my life, and my nervous system. I was conscious, but my brain would fade in and out constantly. I cried and catastrophized frequently, methods my body and brain used to try to find regulation. I was a complete mess. I felt like I was losing my tether to my body and this planet.

Interestingly, I could still show up, albeit in a diminished way. I could still have conversations. I could still garden or make art, some days. I could smile and laugh, sometimes. I grieved with some friends who were also going through difficult challenges. I even navigated the sh!tshow that is health insurance. I was just a complete mess while I did it all.

And this was an important lesson for me:

I’ve learned that showing up messy doesn’t diminish my intelligence.

I’ve learned that showing up in grief doesn’t lessen my impact.

I’ve learned that showing up in tears doesn’t mean I can’t get things done.

I’ve learned that showing up even though I’m a mess doesn’t mean I care any less.

I’ve learned that showing up inconsistently is sometimes me giving 100%.

I’ve learned that showing up scared is actually pretty courageous.

If anything, these messy, inconvenient states remind me of why I’m showing up in the first place: to help and to care, and to normalize helping, caring, grieving, healing—in all realms of our lives. Even when we’re a mess.

This doesn’t mean I don’t need days of respite and solitude—I do.

This doesn’t mean I should push through everything, no matter what—it doesn’t.

This doesn’t mean it’s always a great idea to show up messy—it isn’t.

But there are a lot of stories floating around about how we should “never let them see you sweat,” that emotions are unprofessional, that grief is something to be dealt with… somewhere else, some other time, if at all: we don’t really make time or space for grief—or people experiencing it—in our culture. (And look into the origins of “professionalism” and ask yourself if just maybe we need to update the concept.)

At times, these ideas held me back from showing up, because I didn’t feel I measured up—that my mess, emotional state, ill health, inconsistency was a burden, one to be borne alone, by myself.

But really, these stories are just telling us to turn off our humanity.

To keep us alone, isolated, or shamed by our humanness when we most need to connect with others in it.

To keep the machine running.

I’m not at all interested in performing like a machine. I just can’t live down to that expectation.

I’m bringing human back—to all the places we’ve been told it’s too imperfect to work.

These might just be the spaces we need it most.

And in return…

We need to get comfortable with others showing up messy.

There is a lot going on on the planet. Too much.

If we’re going to move through these times with our humanity intact, we have to create compassionate space for falling apart—for ourselves, and for others.

This can’t be relegated solely to the realm of therapy, counseling, or self-development.

Grief, illness—they don’t care about our timelines. Q4 is irrelevant.

Grief and illness are the disruptive technologies meant to jolt us back into our humanness, and they will show up when and where they please. Maybe in the middle of a Tuesday.

And—if our systems can’t accommodate our humanness… remind me, what is the point of them?

We need leaders in every arena to learn and model how to hold grief, illness, and nervous system dysregulation humanely.

We all need to learn how to do this. There is a lot of grieving and caregiving to be done; this will be anything but convenient.

I truly believe that in some not-so-distant future, organizations will be evaluated by how well they are willing and able to embrace this.

We can’t turn a blind eye to the magnitude of change occurring. I’m not the only one who had a rough few years. Many went through worse than I did, or have been dealing with it for far longer.

It’s an invitation for us all to lean into our humanity, re-learn how to be fully human, and recalibrate our systems so they are in alignment with our full humanness—together.

This is the heart of humanful leadership: our capacity to hold one another in the full spectrum of our humanity—not just the sanitized parts.

It’s a mess. Hold on. Embrace it. And each other.

The savior and the nurturer

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Celebrate small, everyday acts of nurturing. Tell stories about them.

As long as we idolize heroes, we will unknowingly perpetuate the need for hardship and violence that give rise to them.

I say this not to diminish acts of heroism; life will naturally give us reasons to need them, and thank goodness for them.

And, we humans artificially manufacture many of the situations that give rise to the need for saviorism, as well. Create a problem, sell the solution. Let things fall apart, swoop in to fix it. Poof, instant heroism.

Why are so wed to the story of tragedy and the hero?

Maybe, in part, because it’s romanticized—we see and hear stories of it all the time. We love the story of the lone savior swooping in at the last minute to save the day.

Maybe, because it’s dramatic—and the drama of the adrenaline rush can be seductive.

Maybe, because of who it elevates—the lone wolf, the solo savior, the One—all reasonable role models in a fragmented, isolated society. If we continue to hope for a hero, we don’t have to do the mundane work of nurturing, maintaining, caring for, repairing, healing.

Maybe, because it’s good PR.

It’s time to elevate new narratives: stories that render the ordinary extraordinary; of reverence toward countless minuscule daily acts that affirm and nurture life—the ones that make life worth living.

We need nurturers as much as we need saviors. 

Maybe, when we can continually celebrate and uplift the nurturers, we’ll find we need fewer saviors. 

Maybe when we tell story after story of small acts of caregiving, we’ll have less that needs saving—and more that is thriving.

Small acts of kindness, to ourselves and others, are every bit as crucial as sweeping episodes of heroism.

We need firefighters to come in and stop the blaze with a deluge of water.

AND, we need those who plant new seeds, water them consistently, nourish them, and help them grow. We need nurturers who create conditions for life to thrive.

We need this for ourselves, and for our planet.

Not as big + dramatic, perhaps, but still a matter of life and death. Growth does not happen without the right conditions.

Celebrate small kindnesses. Elevate a caregiver. Create legends about tiny, joyful things. Live that kind of legend.

What’s a tiny story of nurturing you witnessed or embodied? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to know!

To heal masculinity is to honor femininity

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To heal masculinity is to honor femininity.

As much as we need to heal masculinity, we need to honor + elevate femininity.

It’s no secret that humans are terrified of the feminine. She has been subjugated, abused, mocked, erased, silenced, burned, buried, violated for so long we no longer see the myriad ways this continues.

After all, the feminine is the great unknowable force—the dark, tangled chaos of pure potential, rather than the clean lines of what’s already known.

She’s the creativity that disrupts the assembly line.

The sensuality that disrupts untouchable order.

The intuition that disrupts reason.

The empathy that disrupts the need for violence.

She f*cks with predictable profits of arbitrary systems.

But because masculinity has not been healed, still a shadow of what it could be—though it is finally in the process of healing—it has not had the balls to meet her where she is: to be potentiated by the full force of the feminine.

Worse, masculinity KNOWS it has chosen the smaller game, and hates her for it. And so, it has tried to make her go away.

We only dominate what we fear. And whatever gets dominated has no choice but to grow stronger in order to survive.

Plot twist, baby.

Clean, rational lines haven’t gotten us what we need—nor has oppressing the feminine or celebrating the imbalanced boy-masculine.

Healthy, happy lives need more dimension: more diversity, more creativity, more intuition, more body, more empathy, more expression, more color, more connection, more nurturing, more daring. More damn sunlight, clean water, rich earth. More possibility.

We need healthy masculinity to MEET—not subdue or submit to—healthy femininity in order to feel our human power + align fully with life.

As we potentiate ourselves, we need to embed the healthy feminine into our systems: our familial systems, our economic systems, governments, businesses, processes, methods, coding, data, narratives, science—to align them with the full spectrum of life, not just profits.

And life is the gift of the feminine: Real, embodied, shifting, emergent, entangled life. A high-quality life worth living + loving. 

Welcome to the divine feminine. She sees you, and she raises you—because she longs to be fully MET in her full power.